U.N.: Syrian refugees overwhelm camps

BEIRUT - Refugees from Syria's war were on the verge of overwhelming the United Nations and the countries bordering Syria, the head of a U.N. refugee agency said yesterday.

BEIRUT — Refugees from Syria’s war were on the verge of overwhelming the United Nations and the countries bordering Syria, the head of a U.N. refugee agency said yesterday.

“This is the type of crisis that humanitarian agencies at some point cannot handle any more,” Filippo Grandi, commissioner general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which is responsible for Palestinian refugees, said in an interview during a two-day visit to Lebanon. “It’s unmanageable and dangerous.”

He predicted that by the end of the year, the flow of refugees will have swamped the resources of the United Nations and Lebanon and Jordan, two of the countries that border Syria.

Grandi, whose agency has its headquarters in Jerusalem, met with Lebanon’s prime minister and president this week to enlist their help in pressing international donors to pay for the swelling refugee crisis.

He said he asked them to keep Lebanon’s borders open to Palestinians fleeing the fighting in Syria. So far, Grandi said, 36,000 Palestinians already living as refugees in Syria have crossed the border into Lebanon, mostly cramming into already overcrowded camps.

Lebanon has kept a wary eye on the flow of Palestinians. It was the mass movement of Palestinians to Lebanon in the 1970s that catalyzed the Lebanese civil war. And even before the Syrian crisis, now in its third year, 460,000 Palestinian refugees were registered in Lebanon, an overwhelming number in a country with a population of 4 million.

“Because of the extreme sensitivity of the presence of Palestinians here, it’s putting pressure on a country whose political setup rests on a very delicate balance,” Grandi said.

Also yesterday, a letter to Syria’s U.N. envoy showed that the United Nations and Syria have not yet agreed on how much access a team of chemical-weapons inspectors will have to investigate allegations that such arms were used recently in the conflict.